[programjames]

It's not that these AI companies need to raise $100 billion, it's that they can. They could go slower, working on custom hardware or better architectures to get 1000x cheaper training, but their models would only be as good as the ones from 1-2 years ago. Because foundation models are a winner-takes-all game, any individual company needs to spend as much as they can get, even if it means most investors will lose big. There are many companies working on hardware gains (e.g. Lightmatter, Groq), but they're not competing in the foundation model business.